I’ve been the girl who goes back to the bar where you still hang out. Same drink we used to order. Same corner booth. Thinking maybe if I recreate the setting I’ll feel something other than empty. I don’t, but I keep going back anyway. That’s what Ro Nova gets in “Chase The Sadness”—you keep picking at the goddamn wound because pain is still a feeling. Masochistic? Yeah. Weirdly comforting? Also yeah. We’ve all sat in our feelings way past midnight with our phone in our hand, thumb hovering over old texts we never deleted. Nova made a fucking song about it.
The track opens with this pulsating bassline that sounds like your heartbeat before you make a bad call. Those 80s drums kick in and suddenly you’re somewhere else. Nova’s vocals sit on top, ethereal and kind of distant—the exact tone your voice takes when you’re lying to yourself about being fine. The production pushes and pulls. The lyrics push and pull. Everything’s working against itself. The production is slick and polished, self-produced by Nova herself, which adds another layer. She’s literally controlling the sonic landscape of her own emotional spiral, and there’s something powerful in that.
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When she sings “You gave me your time but just borrowed mine,” I felt that. The transactional nature of a relationship that was never quite equal, where you’re giving everything and receiving temporary attention. “A safe sacrifice / We played it real nice / But I’m craving it twice”—there’s the hook. The addiction. The wanting to go back even when you know it wasn’t healthy. Nova isn’t romanticizing toxicity here. She’s being honest about the pull toward familiar pain over unfamiliar peace.
The chorus hits different because it’s so fucking honest about something we rarely admit: sometimes healing feels worse than hurting. “You let go yeah you saved me / But I don’t want this safety / It’s changed me / I’d rather cry a waterfall than nothing than feel nothing at all.” That line lives in my head now, rent-free. Because yeah, safety can feel like numbness when you’ve been running on chaos and intensity. She’d rather chase the sadness and feel something big and overwhelming than sit in the calm of being over it. I get it. We all do even when we act like we don’t.
The bridge brings you to that familiar place—“Roll back, rewind / I’m in our favourite place tonight / Where they all know our names and they drink the same / But the drinks don’t taste right.” The details here kill me. Going back to the spot that was yours together, but now it’s hollow.
Everything looks the same but feels wrong because the person who made it matter is gone. She’s literally chasing a ghost feeling, trying to recreate something that’s already over. The way she nails those tiny details? Wrecks me.
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Nova’s been building toward this moment since her debut “do you think it’s fine?” caught attention from BBC Radio 1 and pulled her into studio sessions with Raye and MNEK. The girl’s been learning from the best—she even landed a feature on Schiller’s No.1 German album “Illuminate” and toured across Europe. But there’s something about an artist producing their own heartbreak that hits harder. This is Nova in complete control of her vulnerability, shaping every synth swell and drum hit to match the ache she’s singing about.
“Chase The Sadness” lives in that dangerous territory where you know you should be moving forward, getting better, healing—all those healthy things people tell you to do. And you just… don’t want to. You want to sit in it a little longer. You want to feel the full weight of what you’re losing because at least that means it mattered. Nova isn’t here to tell you that’s wrong. She’s here to sit in it with you, soundtrack in hand.
Play this late at night when you’re driving around the city crying. Or when you’re getting ready to go out and you know damn well you’re gonna text them later. Hell, play it lying in bed staring at the ceiling. Just add it to your situationship playlist already. Ro Nova gets it, and damn, she made sure we would too.
